Hi! 👋 It’s time for a new TimeTune release!
This release marks an important milestone for us: TimeTune is 10 years old! 🎉
TimeTune was born in 2014 with the goal to help you optimize your time. The app had a good reception and the project progressively evolved from a simple ‘bare-bones’ app to the powerful tool it is today.
We just want to thank you all for the support received during this time. You are the main reason the project continues to grow and improve ❤️
Let’s see then the new changes in TimeTune 4.14!
‘TAGS’ ARE NOW ‘ACTIVITIES’
This version renames ‘Tags’ as ‘Activities’. Why this change? 🤔
In software, the word ‘tag’ conveys a meaning of ‘optional’. You can add a tag to something or not.
However, tags in TimeTune are not optional. Each block needs at least one tag to define the purpose of the block. That’s what allows the app to build statistics about your time, show notification icons and more.
But that leads many first-time users to frustration. Without the proper context, a new user doesn’t understand why tags are compulsory 😩
The word ‘activity’, on the other hand, doesn’t have that connotation of ‘optional’. It’s more understandable to choose the activity we’re going to perform during a block of time than to add a ‘tag’ to a block (and in fact, that’s what tags have represented all along).
We could even say that the ‘Activity’ field is the most important field in a block. That’s why we also moved the field to the top of the ‘New block’ screen:
In any case, ‘Activities’ work exactly the same as ‘Tags’. There’s no change in that.
NEW ICONS FOR ACTIVITIES
We added 135 new icons for activities! 🙀
That brings the total number of icons to 480, virtually covering all the possible activities you may need.
And not only that! All icons are now vector graphics instead of PNG files. Vector graphics can be scaled to any size and they are also smaller. So even after adding a lot of new icons, the app is smaller now! 😍
To help you find the proper icon more quickly, we added headers to each section in the icon picker:
The icon picker also had some improvements:
- It automatically scrolls to the currently selected icon.
- It highlights the currently selected icon.
- It now shows white icons against dark background.
Oh, and all icons follow now a consistent style (filled icons with rounded edges) 😊
NEW STATISTICS DATA
The statistics section shows now two new data: empty time and time dedicated to calendar events:
With this new data, statistics are now more complete and the pie chart is more intuitive, because each slice now represents the true percentage of the total.
We also took the opportunity to improve the pie chart with a new animation and a small slice separator ✨
NEW STATISTICS FILTER
A new option on the top bar will allow you to filter your statistics by activity:
This option may come in handy in several situations. For example, when you want to analyze and compare specific activities. Or when you use multiple activities in your blocks and need to filter by ‘parent’ activity.
SUPPORT SECTION IN SETTINGS
The settings screen now shows a new section at the bottom explaining how you can support the project:
This is an approach we already implemented in Kiteki and seems to produce good results.
Remember, your support is the motor that makes the project grow. We’ll always be grateful for any support you can show, no matter how small ❤️
As this section already contains an option to rate the app in Google Play, we removed the review pop-up that appeared randomly in the app. That means less interruptions on your workflow 😀
ANDROID 15
TimeTune 4.14 is fully optimized for Android 15 🥳
One of the most important changes in Android 15 is that it forces all apps to draw edge-to-edge, meaning that we need to draw the content of the app below the status and navigation bars.
As TimeTune uses a bottom navigation menu, there are not many screens where you can observe the edge-to-edge behavior. Some of these screens are the settings screen and the focus screen.
Apart from that, we implemented all the necessary changes that each new version of Android includes: new API’s, code deprecations, library updates, etc.
SENDING TECHNICAL DATA
Prior to version 4.14, TimeTune’s settings included an option to send a technical report so we could help you solve any problem you might have. But that wasn’t optimal, because after reporting a problem, you had to manually send the technical report as well.
Starting this version, the technical data is automatically attached to your email when sending feedback. That means less work for you and the possibility to start working sooner on a problem for us 🙌
Remember, this technical data only contains anonymous data about the device configuration and the app settings. In any case, you can always remove the attached data before sending the email.
AUDIO DUCKING
When TimeTune plays voice notifications, we cannot use notification categories to play the voice (it’s not technically possible). We need to play the voice ‘manually’, similar to how a music player plays a song.
But playing the voice manually had a problem. If you were listening to music while a voice notification arrived, the music didn’t lower its volume and you couldn’t hear the voice clearly enough.
Starting TimeTune 4.14, that problem won’t happen anymore. The app now properly requests ‘audio ducking’ before playing a voice notification, meaning that the music will lower its volume a bit so you can hear voice notifications correctly 🔊
OTHER CHANGES
As always, the new version contains other design, technical and smaller changes:
- Library updates.
- Migration to Credential Manager when selecting a Drive account.
- Statistics tab moved to the last place in bottom menu.
- New ‘What’s new?’ option in ‘About TimeTune’ settings.
- Design changes in ‘New activity’ screen.
- New icons for each field in notification edition screen.
- New design for contextual toolbars.
- Better contrast for time picker in dark mode.
- Other small design changes throughout the app.
- Updates to help pages.
- Bug fixes.
We hope you like the new changes!
If you have any questions or doubts, let us know. We’re here to help.
Cheers! 🥰
(Top illustration by Freepik)
Dear Development Team,
I would like to sincerely thank you for your great work and the fantastic result of this app. As someone affected by ADHD, it helps me enormously to manage my daily life. Thank you very much for that!
I have some suggestions for future updates and a question:
Suggestions: Would it be possible to add a feature that allows you to check a box in the settings under notifications, ensuring that all new blocks automatically have the standard notification enabled? Currently, I have to manually enable the notification for each block manually, otherwise, I don’t notice when a new block starts. As an ADHD guy, I often miss two or three blocks at once when I’m in my tunnel, and then the whole planning is useless. It would be a great time saver if the standard notification was automatically enabled, similar to Outlook, where a reminder can be activated by default. That would be fantastic!
It would also be great if, when you couldn’t start the follow-up block on time and want to push it back by, for example, 30 minutes, you were asked if all following blocks could also be pushed back by 30 minutes.
Question: Will there be a PC version in the foreseeable future that is synchronized with the mobile app? This way, I could plan my day even more efficiently and wouldn’t have to constantly look at my phone while working on my PC.
Thank you for your information and once again, thank you very much for your great work!
Greetings from Germany 🙂
Thank you very much for your feedback! We’re really happy to hear that the app is helping you 😊
About the default notification, you can already do that. You can add one or more notifications by default here: Settings / Notifications / Default notifications (not default configuration).
Is that what you needed?
About pushing blocks back, the app doesn’t ask yet, but you can do it manually like this: Schedule / Select a group of blocks with long-click / Use the ‘Delay’ option that appears on the top bar.
Does that help?
We’re open to the possibility of adding a PC version in the future, but nothing has been decided yet. The project needs to grow more before we can justify the investment in other platforms. In any case, we’ll add more improvements progressively 😀
These updates are amazing! This app helps me conceptualize time so much better. Now I’m even more punctual than some of my neurotypical friends!
Idea: It could be very cool & useful if activities could be assigned to calendar events.
Thanks again for making such an important app. It’s helping me tremendously & I’m sure it’s changing the game for a lot of us out here living with ADHD.
Thanks a lot for your suggestion! 😀 We’ll evaluate the possibilities for the future 🔎
Hello TimeTune devs! I’m cristal but I will speak in English here in case non-Spanish speakers wanted to read my comment.
I can’t thank you enough for the Audio Ducking feature, it’s helping me so much 🥰
As for the ‘Tag’ to ‘Activity’ change, I didn’t understand why this until I read this blog app. I hope more people read it so they don’t hate the change lol.
The interesting thing about TimeTune for me is planning.
Honestly, I barely use Activities or Statistics in TimeTune.
For Statistic and Life Balancing aspects I use a separated app, e.g. HourlyJournal.
So I can understand the reviews I read about “tags getting in the way” or the “app focusing too much in the statistic aspect”.
I guess many users may want to focus in the “time blocking” feature, so they consider Structured (with its energy levels) or Prosper (which has easier time scheduling features), even if Activities are one of the things that makes TimeTune especial. (Still TimeTune is the most complete of the three).
Some users may like to have both scheduled plans/history logs in the same app, but some others would rather use different apps for planning (TimeTune, To-do 1-3-5, TickTick) and logging (HourlyJournal, Daylio).
But by reading your blog it your point as devs makes total sense too.
The problem on the user side, I think, it’s that when I, as an user, want to plan the day, for me *the important thing is the specific name of the task* and the time I expect it to take me, not the kind of activity or ‘context’.
This makes sense if you check the S. M. A. R. T. principles.
Regarding UI on the Task Creation screen, it makes sensd that you TimeTune devs put Activities on top.
But now the Name of the task is way down for me as a user to feel UI-comfy anymore.
You see, now the currenr order is: Activity, Time, Task Name, Description.
I would like to ask you to consider this one:
Activity, Task Name, Description, Time.
TimeTune helps me fulfill my plans during 1 or 2 hours (which is amazing already), but there is some point in which I “derail” from my plans, and the scheduled tasks from that point onwards don’t have any sense anymore.
I have to ignore notifications and pospone any editing while I’m paying attention to whatever is actually happening (which was not in my plans at all).
And when I can have a moment to open TimeTune, I have to re-plan the time blocks from then on, but the tasks I planned before and couldn’t do are there and their activities are still logged.
So in the end, the Statistics feature becomes a feature to calculate how life-balanced is what you planned to do, not what you actually did.
That’s why for me the Statistics feature is not so important.
In fact, I don’t delete the undone tasks in the schedule and would not serve for Statistics anyway, I just move them to the present time, leaving those timeslots in blank.
Sometimes I think “hey, I should fill the timeslots what I actually did in those “plan-derailed” hours.
But then I realize I suffer from big executive dysfunction.
I must accept that I don’t have so much time to ‘log’ and ‘tag’ if I am a person that can barely ‘plan’ and ‘do’.
But sometimes there are productivity apps that take more of my time than if I didn’t use any.
So if I have to assign an Activity tag, I use the one by default.
And if I have to fix my plans, I move the undone tasks to the present moment instead of logging what I actually did in the past timeslots.
That’s why the ‘Pospone’ feature is a fundamental for me in time blocking apps.
As for the tasks, I set an Activity/Tag by Default called “Task” instead of “Cleaning”, “Social Media” whatever, and I focus on the specific name and estimated time of the task.
Then those tasks I actually did are logged and tagged in Hourly Journal and I can learn how balanced was my day regarding the different focuses. Tags, Moods and Task names are not compulsory in that app, which helps a lot.
(Take into account that maybe, compared to the main userbase, just a few users and me who are actually facing the problems I am commenting here).
(I guess in the future you could release an “User survey” pop-up in the app in which you ask the user for the features they use or like the most, the ones they would like to have, user behaviour with each feature, other apps they use, and why use those and not TimeTune in case it supports that feature too, etc.
I personally think that, regarding health conditions that cause such big gaps between “what is planned” VS “what actually gets done”, creating an app that helps with both is a very difficult feat for any developer team, no matter how skilled (and I know you are more skilled than average devs).
As an off-topic, I found a very interest app called “blocos” that uses the time-blocking method, but in a different way compared to apps with the classical approach (TimeTune, Prosper, Structured). Maybe the users reviews about what they find nice and fresh can give you guys some ideas, in case you feel like it. (I share this app as I did with the list of ‘competitor’ apps in the emails we exchanged).
Sorry for this crazy biblical fat-ass comment.
And thank you so much for your daily effort and love you put in TimeTune and Kiteki.
Have a wonderful weekend ❤️
Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions, Cristal! 🥰
As you guessed, it’s difficult to find the right balance between features and simplicity. If the user base is big enough, any change in the app will alienate some percentage of users (some people prefer things one way, some others prefer them the opposite way). That’s why we need to be very careful when making updates.
In any case, we’re always evaluating different options for the future 🔎😀